What is the greatest day of your life so far?  June 10, 2000, which was the day I proposed to my wife. Prior to that day my wife and I had been friends. We went on a long drive on my motor-bike to a National Park where we spent the whole day. I proposed to her on our way-back before dropping her off. She had no clue and was totally spellbound!

Where were you born?

Pollachi, India

Where do you live today?  

San Diego, CA

What is your favorite passion / hobby?    

I enjoy gardening, traveling and spending quality time with my family. I also have fun watching Indian movies and listening to Indian Film music. My favorite sport is Cricket.

How are you affiliated with Zurple?

I just passed my two year anniversary working as a Software Quality Assurance Engineer with the Zurple Engineering team.

What is your life philosophy?    

“Live and Let Live! Do your duty; that is best. Leave unto the Lord the rest!”

With whom would you like to have lunch?

Dr. Rajagopalachari (Last Governor General of India). I would ask, “Why didn’t you choose to become the first Prime Minister of India?”

What makes you a proud Zurpling?    

Team work!

What is your most treasured possession?    

My Family.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?  

When I gifted our “Dream Home” to my wife.  

Do you know any good jokes?    

Teacher: You copied from Fred’s exam paper didn’t you?
Pupil: How did you know?
Teacher: Fred’s paper says “I don’t know”…and you have put “Me, neither”!

Who in life do you most miss on a day-to-day basis?

My dad. I wish he could have lived a little longer. I always loved traveling with him.

The post Featured Zurpling: Kumar Vanajakshi Padmanab appeared first on Zurple.

If this reason alone is insufficient to stop you from using drip, consider the new Inman report that explains Agents who send drip emails are becoming SPAMMERS in the eyes of Gmail. Here is a link to read the full report from Inman News.

The author of the Inman piece is Sam DeBord, Managing Broker of Coldwell Banker Danforth. Below are direct quotes, including the bold titles:

“If Your Drip Campaign Isn’t Personalized, It’s As Good As Dead
…Any time a Gmail user opens your email and feels it is a waste of their time, they’re likely to mark it as spam, which sends a report to Google. It’s the quickest way for a user to know they won’t receive another email from the same address. The sender’s email address becomes part of a list that is being analyzed by Google for spam tendencies. If a certain number of Gmail users mark that sender’s email as Spam, those emails begin to get “Spammed” automatically, not just in that user’s account, but in Gmail accounts across the entire network.”

How would your commissions be impacted if all of your prospects who use Gmail stopped receiving email from you because your drip campaign put you on the Google Spam list? If you use drip, consider yourself warned.

By contrast with drip, the Inman article praises campaigns that are customized to the individual. We absolutely agree. Here is a direct quote from that portion of the Inman article:

“The Customized Drip Campaign
The next logical step for most marketers is to find a way to make a drip campaign send customized information to each email recipient, but also find a way to automate it. While automation can often be the biggest enemy of personalization, those companies with enough resources and computing power can create highly customized campaigns that will engage customers.”

The quote above exactly describes what Zurple is – individualized, yet automated, email campaigns that engage the recipient.

When we created Zurple, we were solving the problems of a brokerage in Coronado, CA. The broker understood that drip emails were an embarrassing failure, so he replaced drip with personalized emails and saw his commissions increase exponentially as a significantly higher percentage of leads were engaging with him and ultimately converting into closed transactions. The trouble was he found it impossible to manage the scale as his lead database grew over time; he could not possibly spend his days watching online lead behavior and typing personalized emails while at the same time showing homes and closing deals.

Against that backdrop, we at Zurple invented a system to automate sending personal, relevant and valuable emails to prospects based on each prospects individualized click-stream behavior. The Zurple way was aimed at increasing commissions, not avoiding Spam filters. It is interesting to note reflectively, though, that Zurple and Gmail share an objective: both companies want consumers to receive emails that consumers actually value.

The post Your Commissions Will Drop If You Send Drip Email appeared first on Zurple.

Toward that end, we want to share a tool called Rapportive that we learned about from Chris Smith, chief evangelist at Inman News.  Rapportive is a free tool for Gmail users.  Rapportive shows you a photograph, city of residence, job title and social media profiles of contacts from inside your inbox.

For Zurple users, using Rapportive in conjunction with Zurple can significantly enhance the personal conversations you have with your Zurple prospects.

Use Rapportive’s Information to Spark Conversations With Zurple Prospects

Zurple’s customer, Owen Properties, has been testing Rapportive in conjunction with Zurple and has had great success.

“The upshot of Rapportive when used with Zurple is you know whether your Zurple lead is the CEO of a publicly traded company or a local school teacher.  These example job descriptions match two recent Zurple leads of ours,” said Tom Owen, founder of Owen Properties.

“Because of Rapportive, we knew the CEO had the potential to be an all-cash buyer and could purchase an expensive home.  We notified him about high-end homes not currently on the MLS and successfully started a buying conversation.”

For the schoolteacher, the Owen Properties broker wrote an email not only about relevant properties based on her click-stream behavior, but also highlighting his personal admiration for teachers, which was genuine because the broker’s mother has taught kindergarten and first grade for 30+ years.  The personal approach started a conversation that led to a buyer-agent relationship.

More Conversations Mean More Closings

Zurple’s core philosophy is that the way to more closings is through more conversations.  The more you know about your Zurple leads, the better you can spark conversations.  Remember Rapportive is a free tool. Download the tool and try it for a few days, and then tell us what you think.  We, along with rest of the Zurple community, would love to hear about your experience in the comments.

The post Use Rapportive to Close More Zurple Deals appeared first on Zurple.

Quality communications, not quantity, improves agents’ bottom-line

This week Zurple, founded by a Southern California real estate broker and online marketer in November 2009, marked its 75 millionth one-to-one marketing email sent on behalf of its real estate agent customers.  Zurple, though, suggests that quality communications, not quantity, is the core of its business.

“The days of starting the home search by driving through neighborhoods are long gone because so much more data is available online for home shoppers,” said Robert Schulte, Zurple’s chief executive officer. “Zurple’s software focuses on creating a relationship between a buyer and an agent, and identifying home shoppers when they’re demonstrating behavior that shows they’re ready to buy.”

“We’ve worked in the real estate industry a long time, and know firsthand how much waste there is in traditional mass marketing, and even in most search-engine marketing,” said Ryan Owen, chief strategy officer and cofounder for Zurple. “Our methodology focuses on the individual needs of each home shopper, and that focus has translated into more transactions for agents using our software.”

Zurple’s marketing platform tracks and analyzes online search and shopping data to produce new insights into home shopping and home buying behavior.  The home buying behaviors trigger personalized communications from Zurple that engage the buyer and foster additional communication.

The result of this analytics-driven approach to engaging the customer is an enhanced agent-shopper relationship that creates more efficiency for the agent, less unwanted communication for the home shopper, and more frequently turns shoppers into clients of the real estate agent.

Zurple Named as Finalist in Red Herring Americas 2012 Top 100

The approach, coupled with powerful lead management tools, led to Zurple being named a finalist in Red Herring’s prestigious Americas 2012 Top 100, a distinction granted to companies that demonstrate outstanding innovation, management, and industry integration, among other business strengths.

Zurple’s product and marketing approach are explained on Zurple’s new website, also launched this week (www.zurple.com). 

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About Zurple, Inc.

Zurple, Inc. is a data-driven real estate marketing company that uses proprietary analytic models to identify when an online shopper is at the optimal point to receive personalized, relevant and timely communications from a real estate agent. In addition to generating leads for agents, the Zurple service tracks and differentiates these leads by their online behavior, and automatically generates personalized communications on behalf of agents using its software. Headquartered in San Diego, Zurple now serves more than 3,000 agents nationwide.

For more information about Zurple, please call Megan Coup at 760-429-7688 or email mcoup@zurple.com

The post Zurple Hits Key Milestone in Growth of Behavior-Driven Real Estate Marketing Service appeared first on Zurple.

Insider Notes Will Boost Your Income

When I speak with other Zurple agents, I think they are underutilizing the Zurple Insider Note tool. Big mistake!

On April 12th of this year, our brokerage had a call from an Arizona woman looking to buy in Coronado. She said she was picking us because she loves our Insider Notes, and that they are candid and not “salesy.”

Separately that same day, we received a second call from another woman who said she wants to work with us because she knows we have access to non-MLS properties, i.e., pocket listings, because we often reference them in our Insider Notes.

So for us, in one day we had two conversations and converted two leads to clients solely because of our effective use of the Insider Notes tool. We consistently covert leads to clients using this method

Writing Effective Insider Notes Is Easy

In terms of using Insider Notes effectively, we focus our notes on one section of Coronado, the homes and condos in the Village section. At any one time, we have notes written for most of the homes there.

Consider the subarea that you most care about and concentrate your Insider Notes on that submarket. When you write your notes, be as candid as you can without overly offending homeowners and your fellow agents.

Most importantly, include a reason to contact you. Some of our favorite reasons include mentioning a similar pocket listing not on the MLS, having submitted an offer and knowing what the counter was, knowing the seller’s bottomline or motivation, or having a plan to remodel.

In other words, don’t just give the reader an interesting fact. Instead, give the reader a reason to contact you.

And of course, use the forum to demonstrate your trustworthiness and local knowledge, which are the critical ingredients when it comes to getting a potential buyer or seller to select you.

- Tom Owen, Broker, Owen Properties, Coronado, California

Note from Zurple: Tom’s office went through Zurple advanced training on how best to use Insider Notes to generate more conversations and closings. Click here to go through that same training. If you are not a Zurple client, but would like to learn more about Insider Notes, click here.

The post Use Insider Notes to Generate More Conversations & Closings appeared first on Zurple.